


No Strings Attached

by marrowbone



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 05:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6181690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marrowbone/pseuds/marrowbone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick picks up a hobby in his free time. Short, cute, and easy. Vague spoilers for post-canon scenario, no spoilers for canon plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Strings Attached

**Author's Note:**

> saw the movie today, couldn't get this out of my head so I wrote it real quick. I ship the hetero furries

It started with string tricks.

Every officer needs a little time to do paperwork, if they’re lucky, and Judy being Nick’s mentor (he’d barked a laugh; she’d laughed too, but triumphant, her back straight, arms crossed (he’d smiled casually at the ceiling, earning a wink from the maintenance badger, which he sharply looked away from, conveniently no redder than he usually was)), he’d been given a desk near hers. Neither of them was much for sitting still and filling out files – Nick even confessed he’d barely held onto the patience to pass high school, despite his knack for dates and numbers – but both benefited from the presence of the other, tossing back and forth short-worded banter and sharp little laughs like popcorn in a kettle, sharing snacks, floating questions about forms and designations over a shoulder to the desk caddy-corner against the diagonally tangent cubicle wall, backs to each other.

Technically, office relationships were forbidden, but no one really seemed to mind if the station sweethearts got a little too comfortable with each other: Judy tipping her chair dangerously far to lean her head on Nick’s shoulder, her foot keeping the other end of the balance on her desk, a clipboard she occasionally remembered to mark something down on in her lap, one ear drifting off the back of his far shoulder. They talked in amused mutters, being so close, and when something particularly pleased her, her other ear would tip forward, brushing his, and they’d both laugh and sit up, just a little shy of the contact. It was one day, doing this, Judy with a ginger snap vised between her teeth, and both doing less work than they ought, that the topic turned to string tricks.

Judy knew all the basics, of course, that were the only way to be truly cool in the political world of the small-town little girl. They borrowed a bit of yarn from Dolores, the floor secretary, and Nick quickly picked up the cup and saucer, moth, and hand trap (he jumped when the string closed around his wrist, and Judy nearly lost her cookie laughing at him). From time to time in the days that followed, though, Judy would glance over her shoulder to see him weaving his way through increasingly complex positions, a pad-point stylus between his teeth to follow step-by-step guides on his tablet. He spent a couple weeks mastering the art of keeping his unwieldy canine fingers from being caught in the string, and then moved on to mastering trick after trick. Which, after adapting himself to the nimble practice, he proved surprisingly good at. Finally, though, it seemed he had exhausted every trick in the proverbial book.

Until a few days after, when his trusty stylus entered the tangle, and the yarn – a whole ball, now – was moving in a way Judy didn’t recognize. Nick was so focused that he failed to register for a moment when she asked, “What’s this?” on her short trip past his desk to hers. A second or two later, he made a short questioning sound past the toffee bar in his mouth, and answered through it immediately after.

“Oh, macramé,” he said, and Judy made an impressed sound and turned to her work (and some of Nick’s that she’d been picking up during his craze, on the condition of sometimes being bought dinner). And that was the last they spoke of it for a few days, as Nick worked with increasingly larger quantities of thick, fluffy purple yarn, after his first few false starts. On the fifth day, Judy, curiosity finally at its peak, leaned over the back of her chair and questioned him on the practice of macramé. Nick explained its purpose, general methodology, and demonstrated a few steps, tossing her indulgent smiles, all the while distracted by the continuation of his task. Judy supplemented the conversation with information from her mother, who had been recently taught to text by one of Judy’s younger brother’s children, and, it turned out, often used to macramé her way through pregnancy. Finally, Judy voiced her mother’s question, and something she’d been curious of herself: what Nick was actually making. At this he paused a second in thought, then shrugged and returned a casual smile to his face. “Nothing in particular,” he said. “Just sort of, you know, practicing. You don’t learn this stuff overnight, Hopps.” Judy felt his attitude strange, but couldn’t argue with his logic, and so accepted it with a returned smile and a shrug.

That night, they shared a few paper boxes of takeout on a bench outside Judy’s apartment, looking in futility up at the light-polluted stars. Judy laid her head on Nick’s shoulder, a picked-through box of stir fry warming her hands, and he slouched around her, both of them taking shelter in each other against the slightly chilly night air. Nick’s thumb drifted to tracing the end of Judy’s relaxed ear. She pretended not to notice. Nick always got jumpy about being noticed. Instead, she held a chopstick-sized morsel of stir fry under his up-tilted nose. Nick started, slouched down closer, and took a bite.

In a few weeks, Nick’s free-time project, which he never admitted it was, even to himself, was complete. “Hey!” he exclaimed, sitting up in his chair and momentarily startling the rhino over the cubicle wall (to whom he winced an apology before continuing). “I’m finally done.”

Judy looked over, smile wide, eyebrow cocked. “With the thing you said wasn’t anything?” Nick’s return smile was guiltless.

“Yep.” He stood and dropped the mass of purple weave, by now about two thirds as large as his outstretched arms, over Judy’s shoulders. “All yours.” He took a moment to look satisfied with the image, Judy pulling what it was now apparent was a thick purple shawl into position around her in slow comprehension, and then turned back to sit down. Judy twisted and jumped to her knees in her chair, nearly tipping it over, and caught his sleeve.

“Hey!”

Nick turned with surprise, clearly not having planned for the most obvious response to his gift. His surprise in turn rendered Judy off-guard, and they both stared for a moment, knelt in the chair, hands slipped in the pockets, claw caught on the sleeve. Judy moved first, using Nick as an anchor to pull her wheeled chair towards him. “Thank you,” she said, straightened up, and dropped a kiss on his cheek. Then she turned around, one hand still holding the shawl around her, and returned to her work.

Nick stood for a second longer, still frozen, conveniently no redder than he already was. Then he smiled, down and away. “No problem,” he said, and sat back down.


End file.
